2K Games have released a story-telling trailer for their open-world historical gangster thriller, Mafia II. This is kind of dark, and I could hardly be looking forward to it more. For a reminder of why we’re excited it about this one check out (Czech out? Okay, no) John’s extensive preview. There should be a bit more info about this coming from the show, later this week.

Very cool. I do wish the protag’s name was something other than “Vito,” though. Plenty of cool Italian names that haven’t appeared in every single gangster movie ever made. But that’s being a dick about it. This game looks awesome.

Need to try the first again because this looks ace, and if I’ve tried the first properly and Mafia 2 is branded a “if you liked that, you’ll like this” sort of affair then I’ll have more of an idea of whether I should part with my monies.

Mafia II has officially made the *please god let my pc be able to play this* state of anticipation. UE3 engine so far has been fine +crosses fingers+ but GTAV is still unplayable till Christmas and new hardware.

I did a terrible thing in Mafia 1. In the hotel ‘kill the informant’ mission, I couldn’t remember what the lady looked like from the photo that the mission-giver briefly showed me. So I decided to stalk through the entire hotel killing every woman I saw. Utterly horrific.

Then I discovered that I just had to click on the right room door to trigger the next cutscene.

So while it was an incredibly powerful (and horrible!) experience to play through, it was still the accidental result of some very stiff, now very old fashioned, game mechanics.

So I am very interested in how they have changed (or not) the mechanics for this new one.

I really hope you can make some choices in this game. In the first one you did what the script said, but I would like to have the choice to wack someone or let them “leave the city before I change my mind”.

What a shame that this only has half the number of comments compared to the Mass Effect 2 trailer above (as I type this I’ve not looked at it yet, so they may all be complaining.) Great trailer. Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant music, animation is great and the voice acting seems to be top notch. In some ways, I’m less bothered about the game play, as the plot of the original was so engrossing that I mainly hope they can recapture that. Of course, getting the game play right again (mostly) wouldn’t go a miss neither.

In addition to the fact that this is a superb trailer, as others have noted plentifully, I just want to say how glad I am that they have stuck so close *stylistically* to the world of the first game. The way that this is so clearly the same city — or if not, it looks damn similar –; and the music!

It sounds like the music is, if not by the same composer, very clearly in the same style. Not so much the piano tinkling at the end, but the lush strings playing a single held note above a barely-present accompaniment are in the same style, and especially the part about halfway through where the strings start playing in octaves. (One of the surprising things about the soundtrack in the first game is that the orchestral title music was actually recorded, not synthesised. That must be pretty rare for a game.)

Wow, that 30’s limo would have to be around 20 years old right? Some poor guy’s been babying it in the garage and waxing it weekly to protect it from the harsh city for all that time…and then BOOM. Sucks to be the detailer for a mob boss I guess.